Elite: Dangerous Horizons Launches Next Week

Indie developers Frontier Developments promised that they weren't done with Elite: Dangerous; that they have more to offer and more to give in regards to the expansion of the game's universe. Well, that expansion comes to fruition with the Early Access release of Elite: Dangerous Horizons, which goes live on December 15th next week.

PC Gamer picked up the news from over on the official Elite Dangerous forums, where Frontier Developments founder and CEO, David Braben, rolled out some brief details and a new trailer for the upcoming expansion to Elite: Dangerous. You can check out the new trailer for Elite: Dangerous Horizons below.

The trailer is definitely a lot more action packed than the planetary landing teaser they released not too long ago. This newest trailer showcases how players can take their craft around the expansive galaxy depicted within Elite: Dangerous and actually land on planets. They don't detail what sort of missions players will take up in the game but they do show off some amazingly fluid gameplay of the landing process and the all-terrain dune buggies driving around and shooting at things. It looks really intense.

Most impressive, though, are the physics. Not to start a fanboy flame war, but I do think that the physics for the space travel and propulsion in Elite: Dangerous has a slight leg up on the physics depicted in Star Citizen. Of course, it's just an observation and we all know that Star Citizen is still early on in development and the engineers are constantly tweaking and adjusting the game as they move closer toward the public release of the alpha 2.0 Persistent Universe module. Additionally, Star Citizen has to account for other properties as well, such as player-characters moving around on the ships, the ships breaking into separate parts and space vacuums affecting the stabilization and performance of the craft.

Even still, Elite: Dangerous' new expansion shows a lot of promise with the ability to drive and fly around on planet surfaces and engage in enemies in dynamic showdowns across a variety of different structural locations. That race across the bridge while a barrage of aerial fire came raining down on them was a pretty awesome sight to behold.

The base game of Elite: Dangerous has already released and has exited Steam's Early Access. In fact, the game is already available for the Xbox One as well. The new Elite: Dangerous Horizons expansion will first enter Early Access on December 15th where it will go through a series of beta tests and releases before officially becoming available as a separate expansion add-on to the base Elite: Dangerous game.

Gamers will be able to purchase both the base game and the new expansion for $60. Alternatively, if you already own Elite: Dangerous and you want to drive around on planet surfaces and blow stuff up, you will have to lay down $45 for the Elite: Dangerous Horizons expansion pack. If you're a backer for the original Kickstarter who pledged enough to become a lifetime subscriber, you will get the new expansion pack at no extra cost.

All players – no matter if they have the expansion pack or not – will still be able to share and interact in the same galaxy as players who do have the expansion pack.